Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Belgariad

I've been thinking about books to read to my boys, who are horribly picky about choosing a good-night book. Joshua wants something that is unremittingly funny and Ryan wants lots of action and fighting. Those don't usually go together well. So I thought of this series of books I read quite a while ago and started reading them again, with a view to how much the kids would like them. It changes how you look at something when you are reading it for a specific purpose.

I think these are a bit too old for my kids right now, there is a little bit of romance and some talk about men and women stuff that I don't think they would get right now, but in a few years they will enjoy them I think.

The Belgariad is funny because I enjoy reading it, but for completely different reasons that I enjoy most fantasy. A lot of authors go out of their way to know how long it would take people to go somewhere, and all sorts of authentic details. There is none of this in Eddings' work. The plot moves quickly, the characters are great and the dialogue very enjoyable. But if little details are important to you, don't read them because the little details are not right. For example: if you had a cave system that travels all the way from top to bottom of a mile high mountain, it would take you more than a few hours to get through it. There are a lot of that type of thing, using big numbers, to be impressive then compressing the actual time it takes to travel, or fight or whatever, for the sake of moving the story along. They are fun books, but not for analyzing.